They are on a tail-wagging mission

May 26, 2006

Oh, give me a home where the Labradors roam Where the hounds and the terriers play; Where seldom is heard a growling old cur And the pugs are not grouchy all day. Yelp, yelp, help! OK, maybe my rendition of "Home on the Range" won't become a canine classic, but I hope you get my point. Dogs need room, too, and a handful of South Bend women has taken it upon themselves to try to create a leash-free dog park for this area. "LaPorte has one and Goshen has one, and I think it would be great if the South Bend area would have one, too," says Angie Buck, a 27-year-old Honeywell engineering technician. Princess, her yellow Lab, would most certainly bark her agreement. "Really, most dogs have so much energy that it's sometimes hard to get them the kind of exercise they need," Angie adds. So she and Lisa Rummel, 25, have been heading up a small group that would like to find a few acres of land that could be fenced off and used as a dog park. "Dog parks are usually anywhere from two to 14 acres," Angie says. "If we could get an area that was three to four, that would be great." Lisa and Angie are collecting signatures to find how much interest there is in a dog park and have already met with the South Bend Park Department board to introduce themselves. Lisa has even come up with a name for their cause: Paws four Parks. "They seem to be very motivated people with a clear purpose," says Matthew Moyers, the special projects coordinator for the parks. "We would be open to their idea if enough public support was behind it, but I know they are looking at all of their options." Angie and Lisa may also see if the county park system is interested or if they could buy their own land, provided they could obtain nonprofit status. Both belong to the Robert L. Nelson Dog Park on County Road 13 near Goshen, which has more than 300 families. "It would be wonderful to have a similar park as that one," says Lisa, who has two Labs, Dakota and Dora, and a miniature pincher, Brooklynn. The Goshen park is on the site of an old slaughter house according to veterinarian Rick Nelson. He is the president of the nonprofit group that runs Bill Moor Commentary is here, too. "I have always felt God's providential hand in my life," he says. After growing up in Hammond, he joined the Army in 1943 as an 18-year-old after he had worked at a Pullman plant making tanks for the war effort. "So when they asked me what my last job was, I told them I had been with tanks," Father Jim says. "Never mind that I only had to worry about one nut and one screw on the assembly line. They assigned me to the tank corps." He became a driver although at 6 feet 2 1/2 inches, he had to do some scrunching. Twice in England, he narrowly missed being the victim of a bomb attack. On one of those occasions, he had thrown his sleeping bag in one outbuilding and gone to the main house only to return to find a hole in the roof above his gear where a bomb had gone through. "Mostly, I was around a bunch of other 18-year-olds, and nobody was talking about the invasion with us," he says. Then one day while up early for K-P duty, he looked to the skies and saw it filled with Allied planes. That was June 6, 1944 -- D-Day. "I thought at the time, 'Boy this is something. I can tell my grandkids someday I was doing K-P during the Normandy invasion,'" he says now. He eventually got to the front lines -- but not for long. "A sergeant and I were replacing some plugs in a tank when the Germans starting firing at us," he recalls. "We both climbed under the tank. But I still got hit in the leg right through the wheels." Had a quick-acting Army captain not given him immediate first aid, Father Jim was told that he probably would have lost that leg. He went through life with a 20 percent disability, but if it hadn't been for the war, he wouldn't have gotten the G.I. Bill to go through Notre Dame and the seminary at Holy Cross College near Washington, D.C. "My dad served in World War I, me in World War II and my younger brother John in the Korean War," Father Jim says. "My mother said she was glad that she didn't have any more men in the family for any other wars." But she was awfully proud of her Jim, especially when he became a priest. A priest with a Purple Heart. "When they sent me my replacement Purple Heart, there were a bunch of other medals with it, too, that I guess I had coming to me," Father Jim says. "One of them is the Good Conduct Medal, which probably surprised some of the nurses at the Holy Cross House infirmary (at Notre Dame)," he says with a hint of a smile. An avid fisherman and a longtime member of the Knights of Columbus, Father Jim is ready for the big weekend ahead of him. "My heart may be about two-thirds shot but that won't keep me from enjoying these next few days," he says. Purple or pale, his heart still beats with joy.